


Smiles and tears

by imsfire



Series: Celebrate Rogue One characters 2018 [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Background story, Character Study, Gen, OC death, Sadness, Unhappy Backstory, canon parental death, suffering in childhood, the dead parents thing in SW is too sad for words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 19:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14921292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian Andor was a happy baby; the evidence was there once in his family's holos.  But he's learned to cry since then...





	Smiles and tears

**Author's Note:**

> For week two of "Celebrate Rogue One"; theme, Cassian and smiles and/or tears.

In the handful of holos his family kept, he was always smiling.  A smiley baby, a beaming, happy toddler; little Cassian with his mop of wavy dark hair and his heart-shaped face.  Grinning at his baby sister, making a snow-droid with his friends, drinking hot tea and laughing.  Hanging on his Papa’s hand, begging to be picked up.  Stomping around the smash-ball pitch with Coya and Josian and Aguilino.  He doesn’t remember it, he’s forgotten the reason for most of those smiles; but he remembers that the evidence was there.  The holos on the wall above the hearth.  The smiling faces, Mama, Papa, Sofia, his chubby childish self.  Happy, all of them, once.

After his father died he didn’t smile, he thinks, for at least a year.  It’s harder to be certain of the timing, as there’s no-one to verify it, and no holos, now.  He must have started to smile again at some point, but he doesn’t recollect it.

He has a vague memory of coming out of school and going to collect Sofia from the nursery, and walking home hand in hand with her.  They used to dawdle as much as possible, chasing snow-beetles or watching birds, so that Mama would be home by the time they got in.  He remembers his sister smiling; even laughing sometimes.  So he must have done, too.  Sometime in the nearly two years between their father’s death and their mother’s.

He doesn’t remember crying, either, but surely, surely he cried. 

He remembers crouching over Papa, staring at the staring eyes that were usually so warm and good-humoured.  He hadn’t blinked once since he fell, or breathed, or moved at all.  Cassian had felt as if he couldn’t breathe either; but he still had.  All around them, there were feet running, pounding the cold ground, and voices shouting and screaming.  A hard wild noise of panic.  The blaster fire getting louder, and then passing by.  Papa who was supposed to keep him safe, lying still and dead.  He remembers it vivid as last night’s nightmare; but he doesn’t remember crying, then or when Mama died.

The day he went to the nursery and found another screaming crowd, and a pile of rubble, he turned and ran away, and searched till it was dark, because surely Sofia had run and hidden, surely she hadn’t stayed and waited to get hurt.  Mama always taught them to run if trouble came; run and hide, run and hide, they’d practised that lesson over and over.  But he couldn’t find her in any of the hiding places.  When it was too dark to search for her anymore he’s gone home and waited till morning. 

He went back to the ruin next day, and the crowd had gone, and most of the rubble.  Mrs Geferen found him there, sitting waiting again because his mind had stuck in the churned dirt, and he couldn’t leave.  She’d taken him home, sat him in her kitchen.  Her son Annio, two years his senior at school, had listened while she explained that there were no survivors from the collapsed nursery building.  Everyone knew it was shoddy shitty workmanship, she said in her bitter voice; the Force-damned Republic’s Force-damned governor gave all the contracts to the cheapest proposal and it was their fault he’d lost Sofia, not his. 

He cried then, when she said he’d lost his sister; sat in the strange kitchen sobbing till he near choked with it.  Annio stirred the soup and watched him.

The day Mrs Geferen started teaching him to shoot, he began to smile again.

**Author's Note:**

> Geferen and Annio are OCs from another story of mine, "Recruitment", making a brief reappearance.


End file.
